Eve Lacey wins LHRT Donald G. Davis Article Award

CHICAGO - The Library History Round Table of the American Library Association is pleased to announce the winner of the 2024 Donald G. Davis Article Award. The award is presented biannually to recognize the recognizes the best article written in English in the field of library history in the last two years.

This year’s winner is Eve Lacey, Librarian of Newnham College Library and the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies, University of Cambridge. Her article, “The Role of Halkevi Libraries in the Early Turkish Republic”, was published in Library & Information History, volume 39, number 2 (2023).

“The Role of Halkevi Libraries in the Early Turkish Republic” is an interesting, well-written introduction to an understudied and controversial community development project and its impact on the early years of the Turkish Republic. The article is well-researched, logically structured, and highly readable, and the author balances the discussion of day-to-day operations of these libraries with underlying political motivations very well. This article both moves us out into a non-Western realm and challenges us to think about government dogma and its intersection with library services. It showcases good writing, depth of research, careful analysis, and an understanding of why we should care about the subject today.

About the Library History Round Table

The Library History Round Table of the American Library Association exists to facilitate communication among scholars and students of library history, to support research in library history, and to be active in issues, such as preservation, that concern library historians. The Round Table sponsors conferences, publishes a newsletter, and presents the Justin Winsor Prize and the Phyllis Dain Dissertation Award to promote excellence in library history research. In 1999, LHRT marked its 50th year of library history scholarship and activism.